You know one of the latest jargon in our political lexicon right now is the idea about rewarding loyalty to political parties. Especially with the incidence of political prostitution cum defection.

As heavyweight politicians move from one party to another to cement their chances in the 2019 polls, one of the dictums on the lips of light weight politicians left in the party is always the question, “can’t loyalty be rewarded”?

Personally as human, I first got swayed by the statement when one politician in a leading political party in a northern state lamented how the structure he labored for was taken from his hands and given to another new defector…

Citing that as the main reason for his defection to the other party, I really felt sorry for him.

But on a second thought, something happened that made me have a rethink today.

There’s this church in my neighborhood… Every time I’m around during their services, the choir leadership never fails to come up with a less than impressive performance.

It’s been on like this for a long time but today it was quite different.

A new person took up the praise and worship and the performance was lit.

From where I was listening, I got really shocked. I was like, where has this person been all this while?

As my mind was ruminating on the thought, I was like, OK now that she’s here, I hope they’ll now let her replace the other girl.

Immediately as soon as it got to this point my good old self reminded me of our latest political phrase… Loyalty has to be rewarded.

So I began to feel like OK, the other girl has been here for all these years singing through the thick and thin. Even if she’s not some nightinghale, she aught to be rewarded.

No one should be allowed to take her place no matter how good the person is. After all she has always been here.

This is what I was thinking o. I mean, I can’t fathom how this one ever got to my mind but I did ponder on this. And yes this thought is what led to this article.

You see this thinking?

I don’t know how it crept into my mind but yes, this is how most people think.

This is what most people expect. And you can see this a lot in leadership especially in Africa.

Beyond leadership too, taking a look around you will find it in relationships… People settling for people they are not really happy with just because they were loyal at some point.

Now if you’ve ever had to settle between loyalty and competence, this should raise a question within your mind!

I mean questions like, is our personal happiness subject to the loyalty or kindness or or magnanimity of some people at certain times?

Back to the leadership… Here are some deep questions we need answers.

How much more can you sacrifice the possibilities you can attend with your team, because you want to keep an incompetent but loyal person at the expense of someone who’s new but more qualified, and whose loyalty is yet to be tested?

You know, this is one of the bane of leadership in this part of the world.

I want to really have you think within you and come up with an answer for yourself

Personally, as a leader, I don’t think there’s need keeping an incompetent person just because the person is loyal. Unless the incompetent fellow is one out of 100 with an insignificant position.

You must understand what value you want to place on loyalty.

If you’re in a relationship and you’re expecting that loyalty alone will compensate for other attributes that’ll make a relationship successful, then you’ll be so surprised…

A new person with better alternatives and other combination can easily push you out. So it’s best to up your loyalty with some competence.

Same extends to leadership.

I think loyalty is something everyone can learn. It’s an attribute that can be swayed more easily compared to competence.

I mean there are certain competence and expertise you cannot easily get with money. But loyalty can be built with time.

Again most of the time, we hold unto loyalty more out of the fear of unknown more than because it is really necessary.

Trust me for most selfish leaders, loyalty pays more than competence especially when it comes to pursuing their personal interest.

And then most people are loyal because it is convenient. And bound to serve their future interests.

Life is not about the competition. It’s about using all that you have completely, to the best of your ability.

If you go about comparing your life with or trying to compete with everyone you meet you will be disappointed big time.

There’s a reason why two people. Two brothers. Two friends can have same aspirations but two people can never have exactly the same resources, time, privileges and opportunities.

Life happens to all of us collectively yet individually. And before the universe, you’re a complete individual.

Most people deliberately go about with this concept about some competitive life.

Such things don’t exist. Yes I know as humans, our species by default thrive on a survival of the fittest… The best thrives.

So we’ll always have this in built desire to overtake others. Or do more than what other people are doing not minding the consequences.

Aspiring to overtake others is not a bad thing. The bad thing is losing our individuality and forgetting about the resources we have which somehow is always good enough for us to get started with our aspirations.

Notwithstanding our default nature, as we go out every single day with a desire to get back home with a “bag” of happiness, we should learn to differentiate between competition and the concept of “flow”.

Indeed you have to understand your flow is the place you’re supposed to find ease. And this is where your whole focus should be.

His mom was too busy fending for his survival. So how would you expect her to pick him up, cuddle and show him some deep loving.

Ola grew up among a collection of siblings who didn’t even believe in themselves, talk about believing in him.

It was a terrible time back in the family of 9. He was there but not really there. Because to him so many times he felt no one knew he existed.

Life wasn’t what he expected. But what would he even expect when this is what he’s seen all through his life.

There was no one to even love him. So all through his life, he believed he doesn’t deserve love.

With this erroneous belief, he grew up into a young man.

He decided he will give his best to every thing he did so that at least if he succeeded people will get to love him for his brilliance.

He succeeded in a lot of things. He became a toast of the class. Even at that, deep inside him, he always felt incomplete.

The day he failed his almighty WAEC exams, everything changed.

From the smiling faced rotund guy he was, Ola became a ghost of himself.

Downcast without too much hope, he met his mentor after weeks of depression.

After listening to his sad tales, Mentor asked him, Ola do you really love yourself?

That’s the same question i want to ask you dear reader.

Do you really love yourself?

Do you love yourself to the point where you can actually trust yourself to rise up to success after a devastating failure?

Do you love yourself to the point that you will give yourself a chance to pursue it’s most cherished aspirations even when you’ve failed again and again.

This is where it all lies. This is where we miss it most of the times.

Yes you could have done better. You could have studied more. You should have sacrificed so much more.

But hey, it has happened so stop the blame. Take a look at it this way…

If someone you love experienced failure and told you about it, what exactly would you say to them?

Would you tell them how you’ve always known them to be a failure. Or would you put your hands around them, tell them everything will be fine. And give them every support you can until they get to succeed?

I’m sure the latter is what you’d do. You’ll want to inspire and support them to succeed.

So if you’d do this to others, why then would you only get mad and angry at yourself?

Or are you expecting others to come do that for you? Of course they should.

But sometimes it doesn’t happen. That’s where self love comes in. And you feel in the gap.

I want you to get this right. It’s time to accept the fact that you’ve messed up. Yet this doesn’t change the truth that you deserve success.

Show yourself compassion and get up to work again. This is self love.

When you love yourself enough, you’ll understand that failure is just a general experience. It’s not a part of you.

And then you will allow yourself to try things again even when you’re afraid of falling.

You’ll give yourself a chance to go for what you really want because the first thing you’ll realize will be the fact that you deserve success.

When you fall in love with you, you will allow yourself to try things you’re not really confident about because self confident people understand that real confidence is gained over time from doing courageous things even when we don’t feel courageous at all.

There’s such a great connection between self love and living a happy and successful life.

Real success starts with falling in love with your self first. It will help you stay with you even when others leave.

The next step is accepting that you deserve every good thing life can offer and then taking a step forward to accomplish your biggest aspirations.

Indeed you don’t have to wait to be loved by anyone before you start loving yourself…

But the way you love and regard yourself will to a large extent determine how others will love and regard you.

This brings us to the end of this episode on self love. And i want you to understand that even if you grew up like Ola, you owe yourself some sweet loving. Give it to you.

So in our last episode, we came from this beautiful place of self acceptance.

We talked about how you can get to understand and then accept yourself wholly without any apologies.

Today we’ll be talking about forgiving you.

Yes. Self forgiveness is one of the things you’ll give yourself if you really want to set yourself free from the guilt of what you’d ignorantly did to yourself through out those days you didn’t understand your self worth.

You will have to forgive yourself totally of everything that happened to you notwithstanding who caused it.

Yeah. I know this is one of the most difficult part of it. Because you’ve failed yourself terribly. You’ve done bad things to yourself so much so that it becomes difficult to trust yourself to change.

You’ve let yourself down. And you’ve let others down too. But your mistakes are not part of the things that matters at this point. That’s the truth.

What matters is that since you’ve now understood and accepted yourself wholly, the next step you should take towards self love is accepting your mistakes as part of your growth process.

Quit looking at it as a major setback. Begin to see those mistakes as lessons that shaped your experience through that particular stage of your life. That’s exactly how i see mine. And it’s worked for me.

For instance when I look back at how far i would have gone if i didn’t fail at one time or the other, i get to realize i wouldn’t have stories to share. I wouldn’t have gotten all these experiences.

Indeed this part of my life wouldn’t be complete if the things that happened to me didn’t really happen.

So perhaps if that guy didn’t break your heart, you wouldn’t have been able to appreciate love. If you didn’t fail in your first business, you might not have realized a better way to do it.

So self love demands you see every experience and mistakes as part of life. Sift the lessons and let go whatever is left.

It means you accept and value your person including everything that makes you the person you’ve become.

It doesn’t mean you have to be proud of everything you ever did wrong.

…But you have to accept that those were the things that happened. And move on with life without blaming or absolving yourself.

When you really love yourself you realize that your shortcomings do not define you. And because of that you do not let anyone take advantage of you based on your mistakes.

Forgiving yourself totally is one of the greatest move you’ll make that will really heal you emotionally and get you fired up towards loving yourself the more.

I’ll be sharing more about this in our next post. Until then, stay winning.

So you just got home from work, tired and worn out. You slugged into the bed without bothering to even remove your clothes.

Take it slowly. Take it easy with yourself, you try to calm yourself as the their silent mocking laughter keeps echoing through your eyes.

You feel like you should just quit working. Yet considering your next pay check you’re so confused.

And you keep asking yourself, I’m i really old fashioned? Is it true I’m so unfit to be in their midst?

You’re worried, sad and depressed. Bit they don’t care. They just gave you an opinion as usual that you look ugly in that dress.

The same opinion they gave you last week. And just like last week you’ve done everything to dress like them only that you’re so uncomfortable doing that.

You love your simple flowing skirt with long sleeved tops. But no. They hate you for it. They want you to dress like them.

So this is what most of us battle with, every single day.

We value ourselves no doubt. At least we feel so. But these folks won’t let us be. So for us to be in peace, we try to blend. To be like them too. And in the process, we lost the whole essence of who we are.

Can i tell you something?

Each time you let other people’s opinion drown yours, you deny yourself the the power to be everything God wants you to be.

Every time you cower when one person tries to shove their opinion down your throat, you’re giving other people a chance to do same again and again.

You have a self that needs to be valued and loved but you can never value your self until you understand and accept the things that makes you different.

Self love demands you come to terms with whatever makes you stand out, accept it and then project it. Doing this gets others flocking to you.

When you understand and accept yourself, you’re sending out a message that this is who i am. This is what i can take. And this is what i can’t.

Trust me the more you value yourself, the more you’ll be able to walk away from whatever is going to devalue you.

And if you’ve not come to the place of loving yourself as a human being, no kind of loving relationship will really fix that for you. There will always be something left to be filled up.

I would want to continue on and on… But let’s pause here for today.

This post was longer and richer than this but the first draft got deleted entirely while i was about posting it.

This is one of the most promising topics i will be writing on over the days in this series.

I don’t know why but I have so tried to avoid writing about self love after i announced in my last post that I’ll be writing about it. Lol.

The thought of it sends me chills. Almost backed out today but i feel it’s really going to be a mind blowing experience writing about this.

Alright. So what’s self love really?

Let’s check it out…

According to Wikipedia, Self-Love was first recognized in 1563 but was only later studied by philosophers William James and Erich Fromm who studied emotional human behaviour such as self-esteem and self-worth.

Self love was later defined in 1956 by psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm who proposed that loving oneself is different from being arrogant, conceited or egocentric.

Meaning instead caring about oneself and taking responsibility for oneself.

I would have just said, self love is loving yourself. And went away. But come on, it’s far more than that.

It’s really sad that most of the time we don’t even understand what it means to love ourselves.
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But the first thing about self love is the fact that it stares us right in our face every single day. The fact that we have a self that deserves love.

The fact that we deserve happiness, love and every good thing in life and the reality that if we are to get any of those we are absolutely responsible for it.

So self love is actually accepting your responsibility to yourself. This is where real personal leadership starts.

But, there’s a problem…

You see, writing from experience, so many times, the first place we look for love and validation is never within ourselves.

We hardly try to look inside. Because we believe everything good is outside.

That’s what growing up and society taught us. That until mum says our Christmas clothes is beautiful it’s not really beautiful. That until our teachers tell us Weldon, we’ve not done anything good.

So we kept doing good things as kids just because we wanted to be good boys because people love good boys. And then we grew up with that.

Then we came up into a society that has rules. And then our Peers expected us to be like them. And then we tried to blend in even when we hated it.

On and on it went. Until we got buried in seeking other people’s approval before ever thinking about ourselves.

Then one day folks noticing our desires to always please them began to take advantage of us.

They realized they can always “fuck” with us and get away with it or at most beg for forgiveness.

We practiced external gentleness just to fit in while secretly hating it until we lost ourselves in the process of trying to find love and acceptance.

We drown our own voices, belittle our own aspirations. And then it became difficult to even leave the shadow of others.

And then one day we found the courage to ask ourselves, what really happened? But is the answer too far away?

It’s always with us. Only that the courage to really accept the truth is what we don’t have. Because even at those times all you need is someone to confirm it, that you indeed deserve love.

Imagine if you come to the place where you accept your self wholly, the good, the bad, the sexy and ugly notwithstanding.

Imagine if you came to accept the fact that you deserve to be treated right, to love, be loved and pursue your personal aspirations without fear of what people think.

Just imagine the power you’ll wield the moment you really stand up for yourself. And then demand of yourself, the first steps.

Think of all these and you’ll realize there would have been so much difference. So much difference about who you are right now, what you’ve achieved for yourself and everything in between.

You see, starting from unnecessary suicides to abusive relationships and unwanted career choices, self love has such an important role to play in our lives.

It is a reaffirmation of who we are, what we deserve and our innate capacity. And without self love it is still a long journey to a meaningful life.

I will be sharing my experience and that of others as we work on this topic. Keep tabs.

Back from our break yesterday. Welcome to today’s episode on #21daybloggingexperience which is also the last on the Thanksgiving lifestyle series.

Today we’ll be talking about how to motivate people with a single thank you.

Alright. Before then let me ask you. How many times did you say thank you to someone today?

Mine was about 5 or 6 times. And don’t even begin to ask about why i seem to say a constant number of “thank you” everydsy. lol.

I think perhaps the nature of my work and daily interactions is basically a one man journey so i hardly interact with people that much on a single day. That’s why i hardly have chances to say thank you to people.

Ok. That’s said. So my most embarrassing thank you moments today was when i thanked this guy for what he’s actually paid to do for me…

As i stopped to think about it much later, one part of my heart was like, why did you even thank him sef? is he not paid to do that? Is that not part of his job description? The other heart was saying, hey that’s a good thing you did.

So i want you to be my judge today. Tell me, do you think it’s right to thank people who have done things for you which is in the course of their duty to do it?

I’ve noticed so many people don’t even bother saying thanks to people they pay to work for them. Especially those domestic servants, service providers, receptionist etc. We often expect it’s their work so they don’t deserve thanks.

But is this all about it? Are we supposed to only show gratitude to people who have done us favours?

That was by the way anyway. let’s fix today’s topic mbok.

So the most interesting thing i learned about saying thank you today is the scientific report that SHOWING GRATITUDE IMPROVES YOUR CHOLESTEROL LEVELS. Isn’t that amazing?

But our Yoruba people will just say cholesterol ko. Thanksgiving ni.??? Lol.

Ok. So again on the scientifically proven benefits of thank you, Francesca Gino, an associate prof in Harvard Business School in her research on the “power of thanks” had this to say,

” receiving expressions of gratitude helps us develop a heightened sense of self-worth and this in turn triggers certain helpful behaviors towards the person we’re helping and other people too”.

Did you get that? Ok let me show you another part of the research Gino did…

Focusing on fund raisers that received a fixed income per year at a University, the director visited a random half of the fund raisers in person telling them ” i am really grateful for your Hardwork. We sincerely appreciate your contributions to the university”.

He made sure the second group never received such commendations.

The impact?

The director’s expression of gratitude increased the number of fund calls to the University by over 50 percent during the week From the people he thanked personally.

While those other fund raisers who received no appreciation merely raised about the same amount of funds they did the previous week.

Source: Harvard Gazette.

You see, when you miss a chance to show gratitude, you lose a free opportunity to motivate people to improve or take certain decisions in your favour.

I won’t even talk about organizations, a little word like “Thank you for being an amazing employee, we value your effort” can really boost the productivity levels of that employee.

The same goes with your clients. Appreciating and valuing your clients is one sure way of securing their loyalty.

And for you dear writers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and you looking forward to outstanding growth, you can’t get through this journey alone.

Even if you’re paying people to work for you, appreciate them. You’ll only end up fast tracking your journey in the process.

The end.

Thanks for being such an amazing partner and sharing this blog with your friends. I really value your effort.

PS: I really want to wrap up this series on the thank you lifestyle today though i feel there are many more things i could expand on in here… If i have just five request, i might consider giving us a bonus post on this??? otherwise, we’re getting right into the #Selfloveseries.

Okay so we wanted to talk about the thing that made daddy give more money right?

I remember that vividly but before we continue, let me ask you, how many times did you say Thanks to someone today?

Well, as for me, i can’t remember. It was more than five times i guess.

And part of those times, i felt really crazy thanking folks for things that didn’t really merit any real thanks.

And then one of those folks, a guy that helped me with his charger acted like i was wasting my time. But i still thanked him and moved on anyway.

Ok so back to our story.

The thing that makes people tend to do more favors to you when you appreciate the initial favour is called the law of reciprocity. This law makes folks compelled to do more for you even when you didn’t ask for it.

You know generally, people say: what we appreciate appreciates.

On a good day, thankfulness changes your perception to focus on abundance. And since our minds attracts and enlarges most of the things we focus on, your mind tends to attract the “abundance vibes” you send out.

This process enables the mind to create more of such thought patterns.

Again that’s not our focus for this post. Our focus is to learn how to use the thank you lifestyle to meet man’s greatest need. But i had to dive in there a bit so we can understand something.

The reason my dad added more money to me after thanking him is because he was impressed. That’s all.

Again, I want to reemphasize something I’ve already said.

The only way you can influence someone is to allow yourself be influenced by the things that matters to them.

That’s why if you’re a a marketer seeking to make great sales for instance, you’ll have to first of all, learn how to bond with a new client in a way that will make him respond more positively to your pitch. You’ll want to find a common ground first.

Finding a common ground means you look for what he likes which you have some good knowledge about, strike some conversation from there.

Done successfully, making his topic of interest influence your marketing, you develop some fondness with him.

He suddenly begins to see you as someone with shared interest. Then you guys develop some form of trust. And research confirms that folks will listen to people they trust more easily.

Done well, this waters the ground for you in an exceptional way. And then you can plant your marketing sales. Knowing fully well that you’re building on an existing relationship.

Okay. Enough of this talk biko.

So like i said earlier, saying ordinary words like “thank you” helps people feel appreciated.

And when people feel appreciated, it gives them a sense of self importance. And you must understand that everyone wants to feel important.

That’s the exact reason why folks steal to get rich. That’s the reason people live fake lives on the internet. That’s also the reason you’re reading this.

Because you want to know, so that perhaps you teach others or use it in a way that will make you look smart, outstanding and important.

We’re driven by the need to be Valued, Wanted, Loved and Appreciated. This desire knows no gender

And whenever we say thank you to someone, that’s exactly what their brain is shouting back at them: You’re loved. You’re appreciated. You’re wanted.

You can always influence people if only you will make them feel special.

You can create great and lasting relationships if you’ll show people how much more their presence or actions mean to you.

You can gain a whole lot if only you will first learn how to meet man’s greatest needs, the need to be valued. Instead of waiting to have yours fulfilled first.

Today’s #21daybloggingexperience is themed on the “Thank you lifestyle”.

It is a true story, an event that took place many years ago.yEnjoy!

So that day, i was billed to meet daddy in his office and get some money for transport fare to where i was going.

I got to the office. Stated my case as usual then waited for dad to do the needful.

I was still looking at him expectantly when he opened his drawer and brought out some money.

I threw a casual look again before he even handed me the money then i realized the money was far less than what i expected.

As expected, i grabbed the money with a faint smile then i was like, “Daddy thank you very much”. i thanked him with enthusiasm and left for the door.

I didn’t get out of the door when he called me, Victor, come back here.

Wondering what would be wrong this time around, i went back to him. All of a sudden, he dipped his hand in his drawer again , brought out some more money and gave them to me.

I felt amazed. Felt like this is incredible. That was when I now said, “Daddy thank you God bless you”. And he smiled.

Really, if you want to think about the whole incidence, it will look like he just found some money after i left his desk… But that’s not true.

It was not like he just found more money to add to me. No. He was moved by something. Something deep that made him believe, if this guy could celebrate this little then he could be really excited if i give him more. So he decided to add more to it…

This is where we’ll stop today. I’ll continue with the thing that made daddy give me more money in our very next episode tomorrow.